MySaladDays wrote:I will have to see him/them as 4 or 5 year olds. To be honest, I have little to zero use for horses who are whisked off the breeding sheds before this, I do not support "momentary" racing.......that's for the breeders and owners, not for me as a bettor and fan.

Not taking anything away from bafferts and pletcher, but guys like Ruiz, they don't get sent the best breedings, top $$ horses, like 20+ at a time. What Ruiz did with what he got was seriously commendable.

He goes to stud at the end of the year. His isn't racing beyond that.

Ruis trains his own horses. I don't think he has many, if any, outside horses. What good story is there anyway? As far as I remember, his daughter got Union Strike to be a G1SW and he decided to take all the horses from her and take his license back out.

Flanders wrote:Ruis trains his own horses. I don't think he has many, if any, outside horses. What good story is there anyway? As far as I remember, his daughter got Union Strike to be a G1SW and he decided to take all the horses from her and take his license back out.

He was poor and now he's not. And he makes his employees tacos (although that last one is a bonus)

"Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with."

How to Prepare a Horse for the PreaknessQuip missed the Kentucky Derby but is expected to run in the Preakness.Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times

A bay colt named Quip, who stands 16 hands and weighs 1,030 pounds, woke up in his 12-foot-by-12-foot stall in Barn 72 at the back end of Keeneland racetrack here at 3:30 a.m. on a Friday in mid-April. He stood from his bed of pine shavings and began to dig into his daily breakfast, a three-quart blend of mostly mixed oats, sweet oats and barley.

Six days earlier, the horse had finished second in the Arkansas Derby behind Magnum Moon. Quip had been perfectly positioned on Moon’s shoulder coming off the final turn, but he couldn’t match Moon’s finish. He spent the final two furlongs of the race in what humans might call a dogfight for second. That race he won. But it took a toll on him.

Unlike after he’d won the Tampa Bay Derby in March, when he’d returned to full strength within 24 hours, Quip was slow to recover. In the days that followed, his appetite flagged. It took him longer than usual to eat his meals; he left some of them behind. He’d lost weight, enough that his trainer, 34-year-old Rodolphe Brisset, could notice at a glance. A blood test came back negative, but still Brisset lightened Quip’s workload for a few days, replacing his usual mile-and-a-half gallop with a light jog.

Good Magic, the Kentucky Derby runner-up, got a little warm on his first day galloping at Pimlico Tuesday morning in preparation for Saturday’s Preakness.

Good Magic had noticeable neck sweat as he jogged back following about a 1 3-8-mile gallop over a sealed, muddy Pimlico main track.

It was tad humid when Good Magic came out on the track at 8:45 a.m. Under Walter Melasquez, Good Magic jogged the wrong way, or clockwise, back to the half-mile pole before turning around and jogging the right way, or counter clockwise, before breaking off into an easy gallop at about the the three-eighths pole.

Kentucky Derby runner-up Good Magic looked much better Wednesday morning than he did Tuesday, his first day on the track, as he galloped 1 1-2 miles over a sealed muddy Pimlico main track at around 7:30 a.m.

On Tuesday, Good Magic had a slow, steady gallop and got noticeably hot as he jogged past the grandstand on his way to leaving the track.

On Wednesday, Good Magic picked up the pace of his gallop and had minimal swet around his neck.

"He was better today, normal gallop," said Jose Hernandez, assistant to trainer Chad Brown. "He got a little hot yesterday, but it was his first day. He looked good today. He handled the track really well."

Well in all fairness, refusing to break off and perform a scheduled work (where the track posts the work results for the public) is not the same as showing reluctance to move forward on the track for a jog. Although for a horse they may be part and parcel of the same problem. . .

Personal Ensign wrote:What is the best and worst post positions at Pimlico?

The rail was cited as a bad place to be for years, but I'm not sure how much evidence there was for it and it certainly didn't stop American Pharoah. It definitely varies from year to year- the rail in 2013 was noticeably dead, not that anyone told Rosario...

The draw is likely to be more important. Nyquist drew the other speed immediately inside and outside of him in 2016 and he got cooked by the ensuing speed duel.

katmandu wrote:Well in all fairness, refusing to break off and perform a scheduled work (where the track posts the work results for the public) is not the same as showing reluctance to move forward on the track for a jog. Although for a horse they may be part and parcel of the same problem. . .

he's exactly like his sire. Does what he wants when he wants. Lukas said the same
Personally having seen him in person 2x, I think he is a late bloomer type